Once had a Beyond Meat burger at Wetherspoons … really enjoyed it.
The major issue I see, (outside of company performance - haven’t looked) is that you have the big boys such as Nestlé muscling in on the action.
They have the means to innovate & market at a rapid rate & will (probably) get guaranteed shelf space for their products.
I’m all for sustainable food, but it’s a very competitive area… Beyond Meat need to really stand out & have a uniqueness to grab a decent (profitable) market share.
Same concern here, I was amazed by Beyond when I first tried it and bought an embarrassing amount once it came to the UK.
I have made it my mission to try as many plant-based burgers as I can (at home and out) and in the last few years some surprisingly strong contenders have launched. It’s not just the big brands like Impossible, Wicked, Moving Mountains etc… just regular Aldi No beef and Tesco are actually really good.
I’m surprised how quickly the others caught up and I’m not sure if there is enough moat left for Beyond unfortunately.
I’m 35% down and holding until I get more of an improvement then will sell. I just don’t see it returning to its highs of over $100 now. I tried their burgers for the first time a few months ago and was blown away with how meat like it was. Issue is the price and the other competitors out there.
I wanted to buy shares in this pre IPO, I didn’t when it eventually came to Freetrade because it seemed overvalued and I felt we’d missed the boat. Glad I didn’t now, there is loads of competition out there and it’s still valued at nearly $3Bn, for a loss making food manufacturer.
Miss on earnings per share and miss on net revenue.
Shares down 7% at market close and flat after hours.
CFO & COO amongst the job cuts.
I tried them (burger) did comparison with the butcher’s pork burger and the game butcher’s game burger’s.
No thanks, no where nears as good. Dry like reused barbecue buggers. To dry and didn’t taste like…meat.
I would have thought that a vegetable burger would work out cheaper than meat burger?
You constantly hear the vegan/vegetarian saying they use less resources.
Maybe its the processing that increases the costs?
No, it’s economies of scale. Everything that’s produced in fewer units is more expensive until it reaches a certain market size. If as many people ate vegetarian burgers, production plants would scale and the price would be much lower than the meat ones.
As @SebReitz said, scale matters, but another consideration is the costs of what you’re comparing it to. Meat is subsidised (to varying degrees) and so what you’re paying in the store for meat is not a fair comparison, a fair comparison would be subsidy-less meat. Animal agriculture isn’t the only place where subsidies apply, there’s definitely some subsidy influence on the price of meat alternatives, but my understanding is that it’s much less impactful.
As taxpayers, we’re paying for meat, whether we eat it or not – to the tune of billions of pounds per year. A government could decide to cut subsidies for animal agriculture and introduce them for plant-based inputs in order to promote the consumption of plant-based alternatives by reducing the costs of those products.
I thought all farming including arable was subsidised? My neighbour is agronomist he says all farming is subsidised. Is he wrong?
As an aside my butcher is cheaper and he makes them himself so I don’t think he has economy of scale.
Your butcher doesn’t grow the meat mate, he just hacks it into pieces.
And he hasn’t got the economy of scale either. Unlike the mass produced veggie burger manufacturers have (relative to the butcher). And arable farming is subsidised, despite what you say.
And I would appreciate if you didn’t refer to me as your mate.
You are right. Pretty much all farming is subsidised.
Your point about your Butcher’s lack of scale is interesting. It is a fair one. However, I would argue that it doesn’t mean much here. Why? The question is what would happen to his costs as the number of his customers increased? Probably, his mode of business would not scale linearly. But the argument that @SebReitz is making more significant: it is not so much about the butcher himself but about the production of the meat itself. And @SebReitz is fully right. There are certain fixed costs that don’t change whether you are raising one cow or ten (for example). Sure there are fixed costs with cereals or plants (he doesn’t suggest otherwise in his argument above).
Beyond Meat problems start with the American market. Post a Covid Boom, in 2021 the sale of plant based meat declined by 10% and in 2022 is forested to decline again by 5%.
Overall American consumers didn’t bought the plant based meat offering.
Plus Beyond is the only company in the F&B market that has negative Gross Profit Margin (not Profit but gross profit margins)…
If I recall correctly not all Linda McCartneys products were shite. Sausages weren’t bad but very expensive. Only bought when on sell by date.
@s_m implys no subsidise for arable which is not true
No it doesn’t imply that, it could just be that raw ingredients are a much smaller proportion of the costs. It doesn’t matter if peas are 80% subsidised if peas only make up 5p of the burger’s cost.
Anyway I’m not so optimistic about the stock but I do hope the company survives as I do love the products.
Completely. They have a great brand so even if they were to fail they won’t likely go anywhere